Kia’s films have garnered critical acclaim and won numerous festival awards. Her work most often walks a fine line between quirky and genuinely affecting, balancing the unusual with the universal – Looking for Sly, a documentary about an Armenian Rambo impersonator and his quest to meet Sylvester Stallone, is a bittersweet look at celebrity and the lure of Western culture (Best Short Documentary at South by SouthWest); Disarmed is an oddly touching tale of the perfect first date between a shy engineer and a wanna-be amputee. Disarmed is currently on the festival circuit. Kia’s music videos have frequently played on MTV, and those projects have enabled her to explore the art of film – telling a story visually, creating mood, and finding organic pacing in an edit.

Kia’s awards include a Pacific Pioneer Fund Grant for Emerging Filmmakers; Best Documentary at Los Angeles International Short Film Festival; Winner of the Tortured Artist Film Festival; First Place Documentary at New Arts Program; Best Art Film, Best Music Video and Best Short Narrative from Berkeley Film Festival; Best Music Video at Zoie Festival; By Women Prize from Luna Festival, and others.

Raised in Berkeley, California by two radical poets, she spent her childhood in a series of poetry readings, and the poetic vision continues to infuse her work. She’s received retrospectives of her work from Varnish Art Gallery and KTEH, a Public Television station, and was a participant in AFI’s highly competitive Women Director’s Workshop.